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Criticism of libertarianism
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that supports largely unrestricted property rights and opposes most government functions (such as taxation, prosecution of victimless crimes and regulations on businesses beyond the minimum required to prevent fraud or property damage) as coercive, even if a democratic majority supports it. As a result, many adherents to other ideologies oppose either the libertarian implementation of their ideals or the ideals themselves. This article summarizes criticism from several viewpoints. Right Wing criticism Rightists often argue that government is needed to maintain social order and morality. They may argue that excessive personal freedoms encourage dangerous and irresponsible behaviour. Some of the most commonly debated issues here are sexual norms, the drug war, and public education. Libertarians feel that the state has no business being involved in what they see as victimless crimes, but these conservatives view some of these same issues as threats to society. Some, such as the conservative Jonah Goldberg of National Review consider libertarianism "a form of arrogant nihilism" that is both overly tolerant of nontraditional lifestyles (like drug addiction) and intolerant towards other political views. In the same article, he writes "You don't turn children into responsible adults by giving them absolute freedom. You foster good character by limiting freedom, and by channeling energies into the most productive avenues. That's what all good schools, good families, and good societies do. The Boy Scouts don't throw a pocketknife to a kid and say, 'Knock yourself out, kid. I'll be back in a couple hours.' The cultural libertarians want to do precisely that... pluralism not be... a suicide pact." : Note: Libertarians do not advocate "absolute freedom," but insist that the freedom of action of each adult individual should only be limited at the point where it would harm others (i.e., infringe on their freedom). Also, it is very unusual for libertarians to advocate that children have the same liberty as adults, and how much freedom children should have, and what approaches to child rearing are best, is a subject of much debate among libertarians. However, that adults should not be treated by government like children are treated by their guardians, as right wing critics like Goldberg often seem to favor, is a libertarian maxim. Goldberg has also had repeated spats with Lew Rockwell and his followers (whom he calls "angry libertarians") over what they see as conservatism's concessions to socialism and its support for the war in Iraq. Goldberg argues that modern conservatism incorporates the best features of libertarianism without its flaws through what he calls fusionism: :Hayek says that in the United States you can 'still' be a defender of liberty by defending long-standing institutions that were designed to preserve freedom. In other words, 'conservatives' in America are — or can be — classical liberals... traditionalist conservatives and free-market libertarians agree on about 85% of all public-policy issues... When libertarians try to break ranks entirely the most common result is that they throw a party to which nobody shows up. Left Wing criticism Many criticisms of libertarianism question the definition of "freedom" upheld by libertarians. For example, liberals and socialists sometimes argue that the economic practices defended by libertarians result in privileges for a wealthy elite, and that even people that have not been coerced (according to the libertarian definition) may not be free because they lack the power or wealth to act as they choose. Some, such as John Rawls and Ernest Partridge, argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that harm some individuals so long as they are beneficial overall. They may further argue that rights and markets can only function among "a well-knit community of citizens... with an active understanding that every citizen, without exception and whatever his accomplishment, bears an enormous burden of moral debt to both predecessors and contemporaries". If these prerequisites for a libertarian society depend on paying this debt, these critics argue, the libertarian form of government will either fail or be expanded beyond recognition. Further, Rawls argued that rational people without knowledge of their current status (behind what he called a veil of ignorance) would want society to provide a safety net for the least advantaged because of the possibility that they would need it themselves. An important distinction made by Rawls is between freedom itself and the value of freedom, and libertarians wrongly seek to maximise freedom without consideration of the value of the resulting freedoms. This criticism is based on the notion of the incommensurability of values, where liberty is but one good that must compete with others, rather than all goods being reducible to one simple measure of utility. Libertarians simplistically consider liberty to trump all other goods, without consideration of the commensurability of different goods. Significantly, although Rawls argues for inviolable rights, these are restricted to situations where basic prosperity has been established, rather than being ideological maxims in the manner of libertarians' view of liberty. Libertarians like Robert Nozick argue the desires of hypothetical individuals cannot override an individual's moral right to his or her life and its products (property), and argue that a "well ordered society" can be maintained without government coercion. It should be noted that minarchists consider such a society to require more government than anarcho-capitalists do. Other critics argue that a democracy can legitimately override the rights of its own constituents, though libertarians like Hayek and Friedman respond that independent decisions of noncoerced buyers and sellers represent the "will of the people" more effectively than ballots do. Critics argue that this is not the case because it gives greater weight to the preferences of the wealthy. Radical left criticism Some critiques center on the notion of property (on which much of libertarian theory rests) and argue that many forms of property are illegitimate. The argument that property itself is theft, promoted by many anarchists, would undermine almost all of capitalist libertarian theory if successfully argued. Noam Chomsky, for one, argues that property rights often function as authoritarian restrictions on others' actions. Others argue that current property owners obtained their property unfairly, justifying its redistribution. This is especially true in the United States where, they argue, land was initially stolen from the Native Americans that held it previously. Classical Marxists and many modern socialists subscribe to the Lockean notion that production implies ownership, but argue that modern production makes it impossible to divide ownership of most goods amongst the individual laborers involved, for too many people participate in the complex process of extracting raw materials and in the manufacture of the end product (see labor theory of value). As such, they believe that property must be held in common for all, in trust, as it were, by the state. Moreover, they contend that the capitalist himself adds nothing to the equation in the way of labor, that which creates ownership, and that the profit or surplus value is therefore essentially unearned. Libertarians counter that this analysis ignores the complex labor of arranging for and managing production, the various investment risks, and the lost opportunity costs involved in deferring consumption until sufficient capital can be amassed to build a factory or hire workers and then spending it on these factors of production. Libertarians contend that an agreement between laborers and employers to perform work is simply a contractual agreement of exchanging the use of one form of property (labor) for another (wages), and there is no particular need to tie production to ownership. Critics sometimes respond that neglecting to tie production to ownership often results in situations in which the producers (workers) do not receive the full benefit of their own labor, or that impoverished laborers cannot "voluntarily" make agreements with someone because the capitalist's control of the means of production is coercive. This last argument depends on the criticism of property outlined above. The percieved situation of workers not recieving "the full benefit of their own labor", libertarians reply, depends on use of Marx's Labor Theory of Value, which is generally understood by modern economists to be false. Libertarians also counter that in modern market economies laborers may participate in ownership by purchasing stock, however, this requires excess funds which many laborers find difficult to accumulate. Objectivist criticism An Objectivist critique would suggest that libertarianism is based on a dogmatic (intrinsic) belief in liberty or a pragmatic (subjective) belief that uses the practical outcome of capitalism. Both interpretations are flaws for the following reasons. Abstract ideas don't exist in a vacuum, thus the concept of liberty needs to be validated by a process of reason. The pragmatic approach to libertarianism that places the practical consequences of capitalism above any rational understanding of the values is likely to descend into utilitarianism. The Objectivist interpretation is that a laissez-faire market economy is consonant with human nature; that reason is man's means of survival; that his rational faculty does not respond to coersion-i.e.: Free will and coercion are incompatible. Economic criticism Critics of the economic system favored by libertarians, laissez-faire capitalism, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifle innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that advances in economics since Adam Smith show that people's actions are not always rational, that markets do not always produce the most efficient outcome, and that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health. Other economic criticism concerns the transition to a libertarian society. They may argue, for example, that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long term. Libertarians reply that this is a straw man, since privatization of Social Security need not happen in a sudden and destabilizing way. regime was heavily influenced by libertarian economics.]] Another criticism is of the handling of Latin American economies by libertarian economists: :Between 1973 and 1989, a government team of economists trained at the University of Chicago dismantled or decentralized the Chilean state as far as was humanly possible. Their program included privatizing welfare and social programs, deregulating the market, liberalizing trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its constitution and laws... Chile's economy became more unstable than any other in Latin America... growth during this 16-year period was one of the slowest of any Latin American country. Worse, income inequality grew severe. The majority of workers actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after adjusting for inflation), while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the absence of market regulations, Chile also became one of the most polluted countries in Latin America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only possible by suppressing political opposition and labor unions under a reign of terror and widespread human rights abuses. Many libertarians disagree with this assessment, claiming that the "miracle of Chile" vindicated their theories. The economic downturn was not confined to Chile, as a widespread recession also struck several other Latin American countries. Economist Arnold C. Harberger said in an interview with Jeffery Sachs that "Chile led the continent in climbing out of this recession. It was the only debt-crisis country that got back to the pre-crisis levels of GDP before the end of the decade of the '80s." Economist Norman Van Cott says: "Following Chile’s adoption of Chicago-style free-market reforms, an economic miracle soon engulfed Chile. By 1995, per capita real income was more than two-and-a-half times its 1973 level. Inflation fell from 500 (!) percent per year in 1973 to 8 percent in 1995." Still, libertarianism's critics argue that the results in Chile and elsewhere show that libertarian economic ideas threaten freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth. However, Milton Friedman, says the main reason he advocated free market reforms in Chile was to "undermine political centralization and political control." He says that the "Chilean economy did very well, but more important, in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So the really important thing about the Chilean business is that free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society." 7 Lastly, free trade has many critics, who argue that trade barriers are necessary for economic growth in some (or all) situations. Many economists, who tend to be in favor of international free trade, reject this argument. Methodological criticism Libertarianism is seen as utopian by some of its critics, with little relevance to the current political situation. The following example is from National Review's Jonah Goldberg: :Ask a libertarian (no, not all libertarians...) what the Department of Education should do, and he will say 'Well, the Department of Education shouldn't exist.' Now of course he's right... But it does. I've seen it. It's practically brimming with bureaucrats who aren't going away and they're awaiting orders from somebody to do something... I always compared libertarians to the Celtic warrior-tribes often employed by British kings. They are incredibly useful as allies in battle, but you wouldn't want them to actually run things. Some criticize the motives of libertarians, saying that they only support libertarian ideas because they serve as a means of justifying and maintaining what these critics perceive to be their position near the top of existing social hierarchies. Brook Shelby Biggs writes in Wired, "The ironic thing is that many of today's loudest libertarians were once... stuffing daisies into the barrels of loaded guns... Funny how once they are financially secure, suddenly world peace and economic justice seem less important, crazy ideological college hijinks. Defending one's own wealth is so time-consuming!" Alternatively, libertarians are criticized for dogmatism. Mike Huben writes in this vein, parodically, "Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist!" One common characterization is that libertarians immediately resort to calling their opponents "communist" for any disagreement. Even Milton Friedman has joked about an incident in which Ludwig von Mises stormed out of a room full of libertarian economists, yelling, "You're all a bunch of socialists!" Both preceding criticisms may be instances of the logical fallacy of ad hominem if used to dismiss libertarianism without further argument. Moreover, similar criticisms can be (and in fact are) made against nearly any ideological position - for example, one could claim a poor person's motive for supporting a welfare state is that this will benefit them personally. Decentralization or size reduction as solutions to government problems Some argue that libertarian proposals to decrease the size or centralization of government would have the opposite of their intended effect. John Donahue argues in American Prospect that when power is shifted to local authorities, parochial local interests predominate at the expense of the whole, leading to inefficiency, corruption, and loss of freedom - as when limits on federal power were used to defend segregation. He claims with regard to proposals for federal devolution that, "Collective value is squandered in the name of a constricted definition of gain. States win advantages that seem worthwhile only because other states bear much of the costs. America's most urgent public challenges... involve the stewardship of common interests. The fragmentation of authority makes success less likely." Libertarians reply that Donahue is espousing a form of liberal elitism -- in essence, declaring that his own political views are superior to the "local" ones he apparently disdains. Libertarians generally contend that decentralization leads to competing political systems, driving up excellence in government generally -- or it least making it easier for individuals to choose what form of government to live under. Deontological libertarian ethical systems Many people criticize libertarian arguments that rely on the idea of natural law, or other deontological ethical views, for what they consider to be questionable premises (especially about human nature) and a heavy reliance on deductive reasoning. If a few basic premises of a libertarian theory built in this way could be proved false, the whole system would collapse. Jeffrey Friedman, editor of Critical Review, argues that libertarians often rely on the unproven assumption that economic growth and affluence automatically result in happiness, and shift the burden of proof to their opponents without justification, when in fact "it is the libertarian who is committed to the grand claim that, for some reason, intervention must always be avoided." Friedman also argues that natural law libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent: "if (as Boaz maintains) the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights (62), the liberty to own large amounts of property the expense of others should... also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism... The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's 'right to do wrong.'" To this, Libertarains reply that possession of property by one individual rarely causes any "expense" to other individuals. Others think that libertarianism suffers from another faulty premise, that being: That people will ultimately act in their best interests. Critics argue that people often do things that are not in their own interests, sometimes even if they know this, as in the case of drug addiction. However, this case also shows that identifying a person's "best interest" is often difficult; Gene Haymen argues that only rational choice theory can explain all observed features of drug addiction, and thus that a drug user's best interest in the relevant sense is immediate gratification, rather than long term health. This difficulty allows a defense of libertarianism against the specific charge, but may pose a problem of its own for the general theory. Additionally, the libertarian opposition to any sort of standard, state run educational system, and support instead for private education and home schooling, with no enforced standards per quality, makes critics question how many citizens would know what is in their best interests in a libertarian society. Paul Kienitz writes, "As increasing technology enables ever greater amplification of abilities, the separation between those who start out with abundant resources and those who don't, in terms of what they can then get out of the market, is likely to widen further... The least we can do is to not egregiously widen the gap ahead of time if we can help it. This is why I oppose such measures as fully privatizing education." Libertarians reply that without beginning from an assumption of humans as rational actors, there is no basis for the develepemt of any coherent theory of political organization or rights. Libertarians generally agree that what makes man a political animal, rather than a wild one, is our capacity to act rationally. Eurocentrism Some argue that libertarianism does not take into account differing cultural views on the idea of ownership. Historically, many civilizations outside of Europe have believed that land can not be owned. Therefore, libertarianism can be criticized as depending on Eurocentric racial and cultural biases, and not applicable to all humanity. Similarly, the libertarian view of property rights as natural may be criticized by arguing that it depends on a biased take on their origin (or a biased neglect to even consider it). Native Americans could say that much, if not all, of the land in the Americas by right belongs to them. Environmental criticism Environmentalist critics like Jeffrey Friedman argue that libertarians have no method of dealing with collective problems like environmental destruction: "The environment is the libertarian Waterloo: it reveals the flaws of the doctrine in a way that seems to ensure that no 'answer' is forthcoming." A common way of putting the most basic criticism refers to the tragedy of the commons, in which commonly held property is overused or abused by each user to the long-term detriment of all. A libertarian society, it is argued, cannot prevent natural resources from being destroyed, or the environment from being polluted, because of its rejection of collective regulation and control; this is a case where the free market lauded by libertarians is the root of the problem. The usual libertarian response, is to argue that rather than creating bureaucratic environmental regulations, society should find ways of allocating property rights so that the free market can solve environmental problems, for example by privatizing natural resources, allowing civil suits against polluters, or selling pollution permits; Milton Friedman, for example, has proposed a system for doing the last. Libertarians argue that this will be more efficient, as well as better respecting human liberty. Critics, however, find libertarian attempts to protect the environment through property rights lacking. They see natural resources (like whales or the atmosphere) as too hard to privatize and legal responsibility for damage (from pollution or wild animals) as too hard to trace. Many libertarians, however, agree with this assessment and view some forms of environmental protection as public goods, falling under the control of political systems. Critics also point to a phenomenon whereby short-term profits can give an incentive for some to buy up resources, deplete them quickly, and move on, regardless of long-term values, describing this as an example of a general problem with the time period taken into consideration by participants making decisions in an unregulated free market. This shortsightedness, it is argued, is especially problematic in an environmental context, where the ramifications of actions can take centuries to develop, dooming efforts to deal with problems by privatization. Free market economists discount such reasoning by arguing that most companies look to the long term rather than short term. Some critics, such as Arne Næss and Val Plumwood, claim a deeper philosophical problem, locating the root cause of humanity's destruction of the environment in its failure to give nature ethical value in itself, and arguing that until it does so environmental problems will only worsen, regardless of policy. Most libertarian ethical positions, based in the idea of the rational subject as uniquely valuable, are incompatible with alternative ecological ethics. Notes # Goldberg, Jonah. Freedom Kills. National Review Online, December 12, 2001.http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg121201.shtml # Callahan, Gene. ''Winning the Neocon Way, Lew Rockwell's webpage, February 6, 2001http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan40.html # Goldberg, Jonah. Libertarians Under My Skin. National Review Online, March 2, 2001.http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg030201.shtml # Partridge, Ernest. "With Liberty and Justice for Some." ''Environmental Philosophy edited by Michael Zimmerman, Baird Callicott, Karen Warren, Irene Klaver, and John Clark, 2004.http://gadfly.igc.org/papers/liberty.htm # Chait, Jonathan. Blocking Move, The New Republic, March 21, 2005 http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050321&s=chait032105 # Goldberg, Jonah. Libertarians, in Theory. National Review Online, August 6, 1999.http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg080699.html # Sachs, Jeffery, Interview with various economists # Friedman, Jeffrey, "Politics or Scholarship?", Critical Review, Vol. 6, No. 2-3, 1993. Pp 429-45. # Friedman, Jeffrey. ''What's Wrong With Libertarianism, Critical Review Vol. 11, No. 3. Summer 1997http://www.tomgpalmer.com/papers/friedman-whatswrong-cr-v11n3.pdf (large PDF file) # Kangas, Steve. Chile: the Laboratory Test. Liberalism Resurgent,'' http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-chichile.htm # Van Cott, Martin. Direct from Chile, Mises.org, March 25, 2002 http://www.mises.org/story/919 # Donahue, John. The Devil in Devolution, American Prospect, Vol 8 Iss 32, May 1 1997. # Huben, Mike. Libertarianism in One Lesson, last updated 3/13/05, accessed 2/20/06. # Biggs, Brook Shelby. You're Not the Boss of Me!, Hotwired, July 21 1997. # Haymen, Gene. Resolving the contradictions of addiction, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 19 (4): 561-610. May 2, 1996. # Kienitz, Paul. I'm Still Not a Libertarian, "Critiques of Libertarianism," accessed 2/20/06. # Plumwood, Val. Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of Reason. New York: Routledge, 2002. ISBN 0-415178-77-0. Review by John Hintz. # Barlow, Maude. "Water as Commodity: The Wrong Prescription," Institute for Food and Development Policy Backgrounder, Summer 2001. External links * Critiques Of Libertarianism (includes sub-sections presenting anti-libertarian arguments from different political standpoints, as well as more general arguments) ** A Non-Libertarian FAQ * Comparison of Libertarians and Anarchists (Humor) * What's wrong with libertarianism ** We Have Met The Gummint And He Is Us; or, Is government evil? * Libertarianism Makes You Stupid * Why is libertarianism wrong? * Google Directory collection of critical articles * Why Not the Libertarian Party?, Constitution Party critique of Libertarianism. Category:Libertarianism Libertarianism nl:Kritiek op het libertarisme